The European Union (EU) and the United States will seek ways to settle trade disputes and some political issues at their summit meeting in Washington on December 17.

U.S. President Bill Clinton is scheduled to meet with European Commission President Romano Prodi, Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen. Finland holds the current EU presidency and will hand over the status to Portugal from the beginning of the next year.

The two sides are expected to issue a statement reaffirming their faith in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and expressing their hope that a new and broad agenda for the trade body can be agreed shortly, according to EU officials.

The European and American leaders will also talk about trade disputes, such as bananas, hormone-treated beef, aircraft hushkits and data privacy rules, in addition to political hot-spots like Chechnya and Kosovo, the EU sources said.

However, it will be hard for the leaders to pave the way in solving trans-Atlantic trade disputes at the one-day summit, observers here said.

Before the WTO's Seattle ministerial meeting ended earlier this month, the EU and the United States were blaming each other for the deadlock in negotiations. Although both sides pointed out that the talks were merely suspended and an agenda for a new round of global trade negotiations could still be launched, there was feeling that "the positions are too entrenched for such an agreement within the next few months."

"If they are unable to agree on a common statement on that, then there is a real problem," EU official said.

Now, the two sides have to deal with some issues which have caused certain trade battles. One is data privacy as well as a plan to help U.S. companies comply with a new EU law that sets strict rules about how they use personal information about customers or other individuals. The United States has no general data protection law, but wants a system of industry self-regulation.

Another pending issue is the dispute over hormone-treated beef. However, it seems that hopes of an agreement have faded as the EU's Standing Veterinary Committee has said the U.S. needs more time to improve controls on red meat intended for export to the EU market, the EU sources said.

The EU-U.S. summit is held every six months in the United States or a EU member state. The last summit was held in June in Germany, the previous EU presidency holder.